Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/167

 to leave first, and thus to walk after him. I could not convey to you how much these little arrangements interested me. Upon coming in, when I turned round to shut the gate—”

“And La Bougival?” said the doctor.

“Oh! I let her go to her kitchen,” said Ursule naïvely. “So I could then of course see Monsieur Savinien standing firmly looking at me. Oh! godfather, I felt so proud at fancying I could see a sort of surprise and admiration in his eyes, that I do not know what I would not have done to afford him the opportunity of looking at me. It seemed to me that I ought not in future to do anything but please him. His glance is now the sweetest reward for my good actions. From that moment, I think of him ceaselessly and in spite of myself. Monsieur Savinien left again that evening, I have not seen him since, the Rue des Bourgeois has seemed empty to me, and he has, as it were, carried away my heart with him, without knowing it.”

“Is that all?” said the doctor.

“All, godfather,” she said, with a sigh in which the regret at not having more to tell was stifled under the sorrow of the moment.

“My dear little one,” said the doctor, seating Ursule on his knees, “you will soon be sixteen, and your life as a woman will begin. You are between your blessed childhood, which ceases, and the agitations of love, which will make your existence a stormy one, for you have the nervous system belonging to an exquisite sensitiveness. What has